h Church and low
Church, there was no real intellectual difference on the point. I wished
to fill up a ditch, the work of man. In this Volume again, I express my
desire to build up a system of theology out of the Anglican divines, and
imply that my dissertation was a tentative Inquiry. I speak in the
Preface of "offering suggestions towards a work, which must be uppermost
in the mind of every true son of the English Church at this day,--the
consolidation of a theological system, which, built upon those
formularies, to which all clergymen are bound, may tend to inform,
persuade, and absorb into itself religious minds, which hitherto have
fancied, that, on the peculiar Protestant questions, they were seriously
opposed to each other."--P. vii.

In my University Sermons there is a series of discussions upon the
subject of Faith and Reason; these again were the tentative commencement
of a grave and necessary work, viz. an inquiry into the ultimate basis
of religious faith, prior to the distinction into Creeds.

In like manner in a Pamphlet, which I published in the summer of 1838,
is an attempt at placing the doctrine of the Real Presence on an
intellectual basis. The fundamental idea is consonant to that to which I
had been so long attached: it is the denial of the existence of space
except as a subjective idea of our minds.

The Church of the Fathers is one of the earliest productions of the
Movement, and appeared in numbers in the British Magazine, being written
with the aim of introducing the religious sentiments, views, and customs
of the first ages into the modern Church of England.

The Translation of Fleury's Church History was commenced under these
circumstances:--I was fond of Fleury for a reason which I express in the
Advertisement; because it presented a sort of photograph of
ecclesiastical history without any comment upon it. In the event, that
simple representation of the early centuries had a good deal to do with
unsettling me in my Anglicanism; but how little I could anticipate this,
will be seen in the fact that the publication of Fleury was a favourite
scheme with Mr. Rose. He proposed it to me twice, between the years 1834
and 1837; and I mention it as one out of many particulars curiously
illustrating how truly my change of opinion arose, not from foreign
influences, but from the working of my own mind, and the accidents
around me. The date, from which the portion actually translated began,
was determ